Benedict Kingsbury

Biography

Benedict Kingsbury is Murry and Ida Becker Professor of Law and Director of the Institute for International Law and Justice at New York University School of Law (iilj.org). With Richard Stewart, Kingsbury initiated and directs the IILJ's Global Administrative Law Research Project, a pioneering approach to issues of accountability, transparency, participation and review in global governance, focused especially on developing countries. His recent co-edited volumes in that project include Climate Finance: Regulatory and Funding Strategies for Climate Change and Global Development (NYU Press, 2009); and El nuevo derecho administrativo global en América Latina (Buenos Aires: Rap, 2009). With Kevin Davis and Sally Merry, Kingsbury leads an IILJ project on Indicators as a Technology of Global Governance, including a forthcoming book on Governance by Indicators: Global Power Through Quantification and Rankings. Kingsbury works also on the history and theory of international law, and co-edited (with Benjamin Straumann) The Roman Foundations of the Law of Nations: Alberico Gentili and the Justice of Empire (OUP, 2010), and a Latin-English critical edition of Alberico Gentili’s The Wars of the Romans (1599) (OUP, 2011). He has been a visiting professor at Harvard Law School, the University of Tokyo Law Faculty, the University of Padua, and the University of Paris-I (Pantheon-Sorbonne).

Abstract

Indicators and Governance by Information in the Law of the Future

Indicators are becoming ubiquitous in public and private governance. What are the implications of this for the law of the future? While in formal terms it may often be correct that indicators are hortatory and purport to be factual whereas law is binding and expressly normative, the similarities and relations between law and indicators are in reality much greater than a formal differentiation suggests. These similarities and relations will become increasingly important as the overlaps between law and governance become greater. This phenomenon is most marked for law and governance beyond the state, but its significance within states for national and sub-national law is also growing. This paper argues that the law of the future will have to engage much more deeply than heretofore, at the levels of fundamental theory and quotidian practice, with the increasing role of indicators and other quantitative measures, while defining and maintaining a core role for law and legal principles in the whole enterprise of governance by information.